I read a meme today that said, “Your intentions create your reality.” It was intended to be uplifting and inspiring. Yet, when you analyze the meme it would suggest that somehow someone set an intention to, for example be, gang raped or murdered, or get breast cancer, or have a child die during labor, etcetera.
A meme like this only works if you look at it from a positive aspect. This is how anything, including spirituality, becomes dogma. When we first encounter spirituality versus organised religion, we embrace spirituality because it is so liberating and so universally true.
We feel liberated because it is based on love and is so applicable to life.
Yet it can become dogma without us even noticing it. I am certainly not denying that intention is a very strong force. We meet our goals – because when we set goals, we set an intention. When we want to save a for a car and actually begin the process, it starts with an intention. When we begin to prepare a nursery, it is because we have set an intention to have a baby. This is indeed the value of intention. Failing to fall pregnant is a matter of biology – not intention.
However, so many spiritual memes or religious memes have been created with the intention of uplifting and inspiring others, but we forget that someone may be reading our meme who has just heard they have breast cancer, or someone who’s just been raped, or someone whose child has just passed away. Then the statement is anything but inspiring or uplifting – instead in brings resentment, offence or even guilt. Therefore, it can bring the opposite of the intent of the person who posted it. Based on the belief that one created one’s reality by one’s intent, could we then suggest that it was the poster’s ‘intent’ to create resentment, to offend, or make others feel guilty?
Or is it just an example of good intention that became dogma? Is it simply another dogmatic meme about a belief system that is presented in an isolated and fragmented way? When something is presented to us out of context, the interpretation of the message can be misconstrued. Therefore, I suggest that our intention does not create our reality but could strongly influence a desired outcome.
We know for a fact the an observer can influence an experiment. But, for example, my intention by an of itself cannot possibly alter the trajectory of the moon. My intention cannot influence my husband’s passing away, or my being retrenched. And to suggest that anyone create their reality by their intention on this level, is preposterous, hurtful and lacks compassion in the extreme.
And that is simply not the INTENTION of spirituality.
For me it ranks right up there with the belief that we attract into our reality that which we focus our attention on. The same argument is then valid here. I never focused any of my attention on the possibility that my beloved would drop dead of a heart attack, or that I get breast cancer. When a spiritual person asks, “I wonder what you did to attract that reality into your life,” it again severely lacks compassion, and is then simply another indication of how a belief system becomes dogma. Spirituality, as far as I am concerned, was conceptualised specifically to get away from religious dogma.
We can and do influence our lives and can in fact, change the whole direction of our lives by our attention or intention.
This in principle is true. We could for example set a goal, or intention to get a degree. Yet, our intention of and by itself is not nearly sufficient to bring us to that conclusion though. We do actually have to take steps to achieve our goal and DO something to achieve it. Pure intention will have no effect in and of itself.
Yet, to put a blanket statement out there that we create our reality by our attention or intention, is simply to narrow a view of the world and does not take into consideration that bad things can just happen, and they happen because they happen. Not because we attracted them into our life by our attention or intention. To suggest that our reality is created by our attention or intention also suggests that we are in totality responsible for anything that occurs in our life, the world and the universe.
We are most certainly responsible for how we REACT to things that happen in our life – and even then, to expect everyone to react stoically or with constant positivity, is also not the purpose of being on this planet.
We are here to feel with intensity – both the good and the bad.
I do believe very strongly that we can influence our lives and even change the course of our lives with our attention and intention. I do believe that we co-create our experiences on a very high soul level before we incarnate on this planet – THAT IS ON A SOUL LEVEL where there is no human pain or emotion. Here, on earth, in this body, I can only process stuff with this mind and these feelings. To suggest that I create my whole life with my intention or attention suggests that I am to blame if I get raped, or get cancer, or my beloved dies – and that lacks compassion and spirit. Which is the exact opposite of spirituality in essence.